


See the sunrise from the other side (there's endless talking here)

by Veto_power_over_clocks



Series: Aim for "not bad" [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Mentioned dratchet because this is canon compliant, Secret Santa, post LL25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28639341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veto_power_over_clocks/pseuds/Veto_power_over_clocks
Summary: After the funeral, Thunderclash calls."Rodimus hasn't returned," he says.Drift is tired of grieving.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock & Rodimus | Rodimus Prime
Series: Aim for "not bad" [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101890
Comments: 14
Kudos: 62





	See the sunrise from the other side (there's endless talking here)

**Author's Note:**

> A late Secret Santa gift to the extremely talented Zero!
> 
> I'm sorry it took this long.
> 
> Mars remains the wonderful, beautiful and amazing person that looks at my fics and goes, "You should maybe add something here," thus ensuring that I can feel proud of the final product.

Silence used to be a friend.

During the war, silence meant you were alone. It meant your enemies hadn’t found you. It meant you were still alive.

After the war, silence meant that the fragile peace they’d achieved hadn’t been shattered yet.

During the search for the Knights, silence meant a respite from the chaos that surrounded them wherever they went.

Silence stopped being a friend during the exile, for the same reasons Deadlock had welcomed it in the old days. Being alone in space is a different thing from being alone in the battlefield.

There was no time for silence after the quest ended, and on the rare moments in which it found him, Drift ran away from it. Silence left him alone with his thoughts, and his thoughts liked to circle back to the old days, when he tried to find himself in the maze of his own mind, when he thought Rodimus would find the solution to all of Drift’s problems, when he believed there was still a chance for him to do something with his life. It all led to him wondering what he was doing with himself, and what might Rodimus be doing with himself. Ratchet never understood why Drift wanted to call Rodimus, and he never understood why Drift never went through with it. It’s not something you can explain to someone that has never needed to cling to a promise made of starlight in order to stay afloat.

The night after the funeral, the silence finds Drift again.

He doesn’t get time to decide what to do about it, because Thunderclash calls and takes away his choice.

Picking up means dealing with Thunderclash. Not picking up means trying to ignore the blaring comm line, the notifications on Drift’s HUD, the unease that keeping someone waiting causes him.

He rather likes the idea of not answering, of letting Thunderclash hog the line on his ship as he waits for Drift forever. He likes the idea so much that it shames him into taking the call.

He gets a sick pleasure out of watching Thunderclash stumble his way through an apology for missing the funeral, and an even greater one out of telling him that Ratchet had expected him to show up even when it had become obvious that he wouldn't.

"Your reputation saved him from dying disappointed," Drift says, and wishes Rodimus could hear that. He'd have liked that.

Drift's satisfaction doesn't last long, because after a few seconds of awkwardness Thunderclash manages to explain why he's calling.

The fact that he wasn't calling to apologize loses importance when Thunderclash says, "Rodimus hasn't returned."

Thunderclash explains that Rodimus should have been there two hours ago, that his pod's comms have been disconnected and that neither he nor the Lunabot pilot are answering his calls. He'd been wondering if Drift knew anything, if Rodimus had said something before leaving.

"He's your best friend, did he mention anything?"

He'd talked about parallel universes. Well, he'd alluded to them, to a better life, to a last hope. Drift doesn't tell that to Thunderclash, who has his own ship, who is loved by almost everyone, who is respected and admired and doesn't know what it's like to see that all the promises that had been made to you were meant for somebody else.

"We haven't really talked in a while," Drift says, thinking about the infinity of space, all the places Rodimus could have gone to and everything that could have happened to him on his way to the _Exitus_. "I'll let you know if he calls."

He cuts off the call and tries to contact Rodimus.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work when he tries again. Or the next time. Or the next day.

He calls everyone he can think of. He even gets someone to put him in touch with Whirl.

Nobody knows anything.

There’s one thing Drift can find out, though.

He gets someone to cover for him at the clinic, gets on a shuttle, and leaves New Cybertron for a few days.

When he comes back, he pushes every Rodimus-related thought out of his mind and gives himself time to grieve.

* * *

Acting has never been one of Swerve’s skills. He can fake cheerfulness and he can pretend to be fine, but when he’s genuinely trying to fool you, he’s easy to read. Drift notices his surprise as soon as he walks into the bar.

“Hi, Drift!” Swerve says when Drift approaches him, unsubtly looking behind Drift, like he’s expecting somebody else to join them. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”

“Getting a drink,” Drift says, with just a hint of sarcasm. He can’t blame Swerve for looking confused - Drift can’t remember the last time he went to see Swerve, much less the last time he went out alone.

“Here?”

“Where else should I go?” Drift smiles, hoping to look reassuring. That used to be hard back when he had fangs, and after he had them filed down it took him a while to remember that he no longer had to stop himself from smiling widely.

“Alone?”

Ah. Yes, Drift always came here with Ratchet, or dragged by someone from the clinic, didn’t he?

“Why? Do I need a chaperone to come here?”

For a moment Swerve’s confusion seems to grow. He once again looks behind Drift, then back up at Drift, like someone’s telling a joke that he doesn’t understand.

Drift could say that he’s very much the same joke he was back when they set off to look for the Knights, but something tells him that Swerve wouldn’t laugh at that, half because it’s rude to laugh at a widower, even for Swerve, and half because Swerve never really got that all of them were jokes, busy as he was with the absurdity of his own life.

He thinks Rodimus would have laughed. He was good at laughing when he shouldn’t. He’d have laughed and then he’d have tried to fix it by saying something like, “The best joke, though!” and Drift wouldn’t have told him that he’d left things just as bad as they were at the beginning. Or maybe Rodimus would have laughed and then he’d have promised that, one day, they’d stop being jokes. Everyone would see how great they were.

No. The Rodimus that started the quest ten thousand years ago might have done that. The Rodimus that stood in front of Ratchet’s memorial, hollow-eyed and stinking of engex, would have sighed, and Drift would have felt sick calling himself a joke after the universe had seen fit to make Rodimus its plaything. At least Drift had never known and lost greatness.

Swerve grins and urges Drift to take a seat, asks him what he’d like to drink, and Drift makes him open the bottle in front of him to ensure he doesn’t dilute his drink.

“I don’t do that!” Swerve says, and proceeds to avoid Drift’s skeptic look.

“How have you been?” Swerve asks as he gives Drift his drink. “I haven’t seen you since… well…”

“The funeral, yes.” The drink’s decent. Swerve won’t open a good bottle for someone that doesn’t actually care what he’s drinking. “You can talk about it, Swerve, it’s been two months.”

Swerve grabs a glass and starts cleaning it.

“It feels odd. I always thought Ratchet would be more stubborn than death.”

“I believe he thought the same.” Drift smiles, fond despite the frustration. “For all he said he was a rational thinker, he never got over his belief that he was unstoppable.” He takes a sip of engex. “Everybody else needed a break, everybody else was fragile, but he never looked after himself in the same way.”

“I’m sorry,” Swerve says awkwardly.

“Don’t be,” Drift says, raising a hand in a pacifying gesture. “If anybody should apologize for that, it’s Ratchet.”

This time, Swerve does laugh.

“That’s harsh.”

“We were together for centuries, Swerve. If anybody has earned the right to be harsh to Ratchet, it’s me.”

They keep talking for a while, catching up. Swerve tells him about Misfire and how the bar isn’t doing well, but shouldn’t be at risk of closing down anytime soon. Drift tells him about managing the clinic’s finances. They talk about mutual acquaintances. Nautica’s off world on a book tour. The Scavengers hired Velocity at their clinic. Whirl’s living with Cyclonus and Tailgate. Swerve remains the best way to find out about things, and to ensure that everybody gets to hear the latest news.

He doesn’t know anything about Rodimus, though.

"Do you think-?" Swerve looks down at the glass he's cleaning. It’s the same one he picked up when they started talking. "Do you think he's alive?"

Drift understands the hesitation, the fear. He knows that the only thing that got him on that shuttle two months ago was guilt, and even then he’d felt guilty about how he’d gone further to reach out for someone that might be dead than he’d done to find him when there was still a chance to do something about it.

“He’s alive,” Drift says.

Swerve looks at him doubtfully.

“I know you always had a lot of confidence when it came to Rodimus, but…”

“I went to Necroworld.” Drift looks straight at Swerve’s face as he elaborates, “I found Rodimus’s plynth. He’s alive.”

“Oh.”

What he doesn't tell Swerve: how he'd thought his spark would burn out because of fear as he searched for Rodimus’s hologram. How he'd nearly collapsed with relief when he saw the familiar profile on the monument. How, after every last shred of fear had disappeared, what replaced it was anger.

Rodimus was running away from his problems. Rodimus had returned to the stars, and he hadn’t asked Drift to go with him.

He'd left Drift behind to drown in his sorrow, in all the memories of his shared life with Ratchet, in the aimlessness of his existence.

So Rodimus had seen fit to leave them all behind? Fine. Good riddance. Drift will be better than that, because he knows that, if Rodimus showed up in this moment, he'd follow him again.

But Rodimus won't come, no matter how many times Drift tries to comm him, no matter how much he prays. Rodimus was never the answer to Drift's needs, and he isn't the answer now either.

Drift is going to take all the things Rodimus hadn’t tried to fight for, he’ll fix this life that Rodimus couldn’t face, and one day he’ll find Rodimus and show him that running away wasn’t the solution.

He starts by no longer wondering if Ratty's alive elsewhere. It won't change things for him.

He promises Swerve to return the next week. Unlike the promise to stay in touch with Rodimus, the one he broke a thousand times through the years, he keeps this one.

He keeps it week after week for a decade, even when he really doesn’t feel like dealing with Swerve.

* * *

A flat piece of _something_ (paper? It might be paper. Drift never imagined that anyone would still use sheets of anything to send messages these days) was stuck to Drift’s door at some point during the night. He studies it carefully before touching it; it shows two giant figures half buried in the ground. ‘Half buried’ in the sense that only the top half of the figures’ bodies can be seen, yet it’s clear that that’s what the sculptor intended: one of the figures has its hands clasped in front of it, head bowed as in prayer, while the other one has a hand extended towards the sky, as if desperately trying to reach for the light, and its other hand is digging its fingers into the ground, trying to push the figure up and out of the dirt.

Drift knows those statues. They’re the main attraction of the city of Arua, over at Osv. The _Lost Light_ had never been to Osv, but Rodimus had talked about going there someday. He’d never had the chance, what with the mutiny, the end of the universe, and the end of the quest.

He already knows who sent it. On the picture’s back, in Rodimus’s strangely pretty handwriting, it reads, “ _I knew they’d be big, but they’re_ **_bigger_** _. Can you tell everyone I’m doing good?_ ”

It’s not signed. Then again, Rodimus is the only person in the universe who’d do something like this, and he knows that Drift knows it, so why would he bother?

Drift calls the clinic, tells them he’ll be late, and heads for Ratchet’s memorial. Rodimus asked him to tell everyone, right? He should start with his conjunx.

“He left,” he tells the hologram. “He left just like that and now he gives signs of life? Like nothing happened? Like we weren’t worried about him?”

Because Drift _had_ worried about him, despite how much he hadn’t wanted to. Every day he’d wondered if Rodimus was alright, where he might be, if he might be alone. He’d left with the Lunabot that had piloted his pod, and Drift asked himself if they’d been friends. Rodimus needs people around him, people to talk to, people that won’t keep themselves from calling him even though they know he might need them.

Worrying about Rodimus didn’t lessen the guilt of a long neglected friendship, but at least it kept Drift busy when he started to think of Ratchet and to wonder what would have happened if he’d taken better care of himself. When thinking about Ratchet became too much, he thought about Rodimus.

Neither of them must be thinking about him right now. Ratchet because he’d be too stubborn to enter an afterlife he refused to believe in and Rodimus because, well. If he’d had more than a passing thought about Drift, he’d have already shown up to try to drag Drift on this new adventure with him.

At least he gets a postcard.

* * *

“That’s not far from here,” Swerve says after Drift shows him the postcard, looking up Osv’s location. “A couple days’ travel, according to this website, and that’s only if you don’t have your own shuttle.”

“I’m not leaving the clinic to chase after Rodimus,” Drift says. “Anyway, can you let the others know he’s fine?”

Velocity picks that moment to drop by the bar. Drift never became close to her - she’d worked at Ratchet’s clinic for a few years after the _Lost Light_ was decommissioned, but she’d left as soon as she found a better offer. Drift can’t blame her, not after the time he found Ratchet going through one of her patient files in his free time (Velocity’s files, First Aid’s, Influx’s... well, anybody’s files that happened to cross his path) - but since he started coming over to _Swerve’s_ , they’ve developed… something. It’s not friendship. They’re not acquaintances. It dances somewhere in the border, like a promise or a fairy tale.

“Who’s fine?” Velocity asks, taking a seat at the bar next to Drift.

“Rodimus,” Swerve says.

“What?!” Velocity turns from Swerve to Drift and then looks at Swerve again. “He gave signs of life?”

“He sent a postcard,” Swerve says, taking said object from Drift’s hands and handing it over to Velocity, who studies it curiously.

“I didn’t know postcards still existed,” she says, almost awed. “I bet Nautica and Brainstorm would like to see it.”

“You should show it to them,” Drift says, trying not to care but still worrying about the postcard getting lost. “It says that everyone should know that he’s fine.”

“Maybe we should call everyone here,” Swerve says. “Make it a Crusadercons reunion.”

Velocity smiles. “Sounds good to me.” She hands the postcard back to Drift. “It might even get Minimus out of Luna 1.”

Drift hasn’t seen everyone in the same place since the funeral.

“If that happens, I’m buying the first round,” Drift says.

* * *

Minimus doesn’t show up. Neither do Brainstorm and Perceptor. Thunderclash isn’t invited.

Actually, the only ones that show up are Velocity, Cyclonus, Tailgate and Whirl.

Drift buys all of them drinks anyway.

After that, Whirl starts dropping by the bar every now and then. Every time he does he updates them on his plan to steal his scraplets from the facility where they’ve been held for the last ten thousand years. What worries Drift is that it might not be a joke.

He asks Cyclonus about it when he and Tailgate come with Whirl to _Swerve’s_ , and he can tell from the look on his face that Cyclonus is just as worried as Drift is.

“I can probably bail him out if it comes down to it,” Drift says, sighing.

“Thank you,” Cyclonus says.

* * *

Ten years after Drift got the postcard, Cyclonus walks into _Swerve’s_ carrying a new one. This one depicts one of the walking jungles of Hroo. Rodimus had talked about them as well.

On the back of the postcard it reads, “ _You can ride them!!!!! Please let everyone know I’m fine._ ”

Once again, they try to gather everyone at the bar. This time, Minimus appears, and Drift keeps his old promise and buys everyone a drink.

* * *

The next postcard is for Minimus. The next meeting at _Swerve’s_ brings more people, although that has more to do with the Scavengers deciding to join than with any more from the _Lost Light_ accepting the invitation.

Nickel studies the postcard for a long time before giving it to Drift.

“Those are organic flowers,” she says, her mouth twisting in distaste.

“They are,” Drift says, marvelling at the picture. It’s a field full of flowers that go beyond what the eye can see, but that’s not what makes Drift’s spark dance. It’s that, on the back of the postcard, Rodimus wrote, “ _They’re grown by an ex-Con called Crystal Wing._ ”

Drift has heard about the planet garden of Pache. Deadlock used to be stationed there, back when it wasn’t a garden, just a planet full of vegetation and devoid of intelligent life. Deadlock used to know Crystal Wing as well.

If Pache and Crystal Wing could become something worthy, then so can Drift.

* * *

Drift opens a map of the known universe and marks the places from the postcards. Unlike Osv, Hroo is far away. It’d take at least a month to get there, and only if you didn’t stop on the way. Knowing Rodimus, it might have taken him half a year to cover the distance.

He doesn’t even try to estimate how long it’d take to get to Pache.

It occurs to Drift that Rodimus might come back someday. One postcard had seemed like Rodimus’s sad attempt to pretend he hadn’t forgotten about them, but two? Three? There might be a fourth one, a few years in the future.

What will Drift tell him, if he comes back? That he’s the same mech that said goodbye to him during Ratchet’s funeral?

Except that’s not true, is it? He’s been talking to Swerve, to Velocity, to Whirl. Even to Cyclonus and Tailgate sometimes. When Nautica was promoting her new book, Velocity invited him to the event, and all of them went for a drink together. When Whirl needed a recommendation to work security at the Scavengers’ clinic, he asked Drift for it. Cyclonus invites him over for dinner every now and then.

He thinks that, if something like Ratchet’s funeral happened again today, they might stay with him until he decided to go home instead of leaving him alone in front of the memorial.

He thinks that, if something like Ratchet's funeral happened today, he would try harder to keep Rodimus around for a few more minutes. Maybe then Rodimus wouldn't have run away. Maybe he and Rodimus would be planning this trip through the universe together.

Is that what Drift wants? To follow Rodimus's whims again?

No.

What Drift wants, what he has wanted since the moment the _Lost Light_ left Cybertron, is to be Rodimus's friend again. To be the mech who believed that the two of them could make a change. He wants to be someone that people consider only as himself, not as Rodimus's cheerleader or Ratchet's husband.

He wants something for himself.

He needs to figure out what that is, first.

His house is silent. It’s been quiet for years, but he’s never allowed himself to think about it. Drift closes the map, shuts off his optics and dares himself to think about everything he hadn’t wanted to. About Ratchet’s death, about Rodimus leaving. About the exile and the belief that the only person that cared about him was Ratchet. About Rodimus asking him not to take the blame for Overlord and his own insistence that that’s how it was meant to be. About how, once upon a time, he’d wanted to kiss Rodimus, but had never dared to. About how guilty he feels for never being the friend Rodimus needed, and his anger because Rodimus was never the friend Drift needed either. His frustration at how perfectly they’d failed each other, and how he wishes they could have another chance.

He drowns in memories and possibilities and then lets everything drain away. What’s happened, happened. What will be is up to him.

Drift in-vents slowly and focuses on his frame, the slow spinning of his spark, the humming of his processor, the flow of energon through his lines. For the first time since his mercenary days, Drift allows himself to only think about himself.

* * *

“I heard you left the clinic,” Minimus says evenly.

“I did,” Drift says simply, more interested in the flower catalog he’s browsing than in Minimus’s call. He might have felt bad about that in the past, but the whole point of caring about yourself is to learn not to pay attention to people that never thought much of you.

“Why?” There’s an edge to the question that sets off an alarm in Drift’s processor. Did he call to judge? He might have called to judge.

“It was Ratchet’s clinic, not mine.” Drift closes the flower catalog and starts looking for some community outreach programs he’s heard of. Something about bringing opportunities to the poorer areas of Cybertron. “I’m not a doctor, I can do other things with my time.” And his money.

“Who will oversee the clinic now?”

“I’m still in charge of finances.” The problem with these programs is that they never seem to do enough, but Drift figures it’s better than doing nothing. “I just won’t spend time there anymore.”

“What will you do?” Minimus asks, and this time Drift thinks he sounds concerned.

For the first time since the call started, Drift actually focuses on Minimus.

“Meditate? Teach sword fighting? Maybe I’ll study something.” There’s so much to do. He only needs to find something that calls to him. “I don’t know yet.”

Minimus hums, either in judging or thought.

“You could do the same,” Drift says. “You could find a new job.”

“I’m good at what I do,” Minimus says, sounding almost offended at the suggestion.

“I was good at killing, but I’m not going back to being a mercenary.”

Maybe he should feel a bit guilty for how that makes Minimus react, but Drift mainly finds it funny. The only thing that saddens him is that he can’t tell Rodimus about it.

* * *

In the end, he opens a sword-fighting school. Whirl calls it an uninspired decision.

Despite agreeing with the statement, Drift still makes him take it back a few years later, when Whirl shows up demanding Drift teach the scraplets how to use a sword.

* * *

Every ten years, there’s a new postcard. It’s always sent to a different member of the crew. Some of them don’t care, others seem to consider it a wake up call and start hanging out at _Swerve’s_ when they get the chance. After a while, Cyclonus gets a second postcard. So does Minimus.

They start organizing gatherings at _Swerve’s_ whenever a new postcard arrives. It’s an easy way to stay in touch.

Drift never gets a postcard after the first one, the one that started everything.

* * *

“Drift,” Grimlock says as way of greeting when Drift answers his video call. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking from what little of him Drift can see on the screen, but Velocity’s anxious smile next to him tells Drift that he should start practicing his venting exercises.

“Hi, Grimlock. Hi, Velocity,” Drift says, waving at them.

Velocity waves back and looks at Grimlock, who looks back at her. He gestures towards the screen with his head and she nods.

“We ran into Rodimus,” Velocity says carefully. “Three days ago.”

Drift stares.

“He asked us not to tell you until three days had passed,” she continues.

Drift stands up.

“He was in Alstra, for the meteor shower.” Her hand rests on Grimlock’s arm.

“Did he say anything else?” Drift asks, his voice deceptively calm.

“He congratulated us, said he’d never have imagined it, and wished us the best,” Grimlock says. “But no, nothing else regarding the others.”

“He seemed to be in a hurry,” Velocity adds. Then she looks guilty. “Actually, I think he tried to hide from us? Then he realized that we’d already seen him.”

Grimlock nods at that.

“Have you told the others?” Drift asks, wondering whether or not to sit down again.

“No. He said that, if we told anyone, it should be you.”

“Why?”

Velocity shrugs and shakes her head, visibly puzzled.

“He said you’d get it.”

Get what? Why Rodimus had gone to Alstra? Why he’d left and hadn’t wanted to be found? Why he hadn’t come back yet? Or was it simply that, in Rodimus’s eyes, Drift was the only one who’d truly care about what he was doing?

“How did he look?” Drift asks.

Velocity smiles. “Really happy.”

It’s almost enough for Drift to forgive him for leaving.

Almost. Because it’s been six thousand years, and Rodimus hasn’t written to him again.

* * *

Ten thousand years after Ratchet’s funeral, Drift gets a postcard.

When he first sees it, Drift thinks it’s a cruel joke. Everyone has noticed that Rodimus never contacts him, and one of them might have thought it’d be funny to give him false hope. Then he takes a good look at the picture. It’s the view from a ship’s bridge. It’s the view from the _Lost Light_ ’s bridge, the day Drift had given it to Rodimus. Drift took the picture after Rodimus asked.

There’s a comm frequency on the back of the postcard. There’s also another postcard behind the first one. The second picture only shows some stars, and the message on it reads, “ _Still doing good. Please tell the others._ ”

He calls Swerve, organizes the usual gathering and then dials the comm frequency. Nobody picks up, so he leaves a message.

* * *

At some point, the postcard gatherings grew. First it was only the few people that still cared to meet, then it was the people that felt obligated to show up, then they all decided to make an effort and convince all former crewmates to come. Some had wives, husbands or best friends that hadn’t been part of the quest, and those had been invited to come to the gatherings as well, to share this part of history that their loved ones had participated in. Drift had insisted on everyone bringing their loved ones, because he knew that Rodimus would have liked that.

Once, they’d called the crew of the _Lost Light_ a family. If its members had more people in their lives, it only made sense to consider them family as well.

The postcard with the picture of the stars is passed around _Swerve’s_. Some try to guess what stars they’re looking at, wonder aloud if there’s any meaning behind the picture, try to figure out what part of the universe Rodimus is roaming in, and Drift doesn’t tell them that the stars in the picture are the ones you saw when you went outside the Wreckers base in which he and Rodimus, then Hot Rod, met.

Whirl takes one look at the picture and says, “I remember that,” before running off after his scraplets, which are chasing after Minimus demanding he sing for them.

All around Drift, there’s noise and there’s happiness. If love is what gives things meaning, then scholars could spend eons talking about today’s gathering.

Drift watches the door and waits.

He waits for a long time.

He doesn’t wait in vain.

* * *

Drift had finally looked away from the door when he heard a glass break and someone cheer.

Slowly, he turns around in his seat and watches as Rodimus tries to take a step into the bar as everyone rushes over to greet him.

 _There you are_ , Drift thinks. _I was afraid you wouldn’t come._

Rodimus looks… Drift doesn’t dare to describe him, but words come unbidden to his mind. Bright. Warm. Happy. Alive.

He’s so alive that it makes everyone around him look younger as well.

He’s so alive that Drift can’t help but forgive him for leaving.

Rodimus looks around the bar, evidently searching for something, so Drift puts him out of his misery and raises a hand, waving it until Rodimus sees him.

It takes Rodimus a while to reach Drift, everyone around eager to talk to him, to ask him what he’s been up to. Drift isn’t in any hurry to go to Rodimus; he assumes they’ll have time after everyone has left.

Finally, as the evening comes to an end, Rodimus gets to sit next to Drift at the bar.

“Hey,” Rodimus says, his smile radiant and his eyes afraid. “It’s been a while.”

Drift only stares and waits.

Slowly, Rodimus’s smile disappears.

“I thought you were dead,” Drift says.

“I’m sorry,” Rodimus says quietly.

“I’m sorry too.”

Rodimus frowns. “What for?”

Drift ex-vents heavily. “Do you really need me to make a list?”

Rodimus nods slowly and looks at the people that remain at _Swerve’s_. Nautica, Brainstorm and Perceptor are chatting at a corner table. Anode and Lug are laughing with Swerve and Misfire. Velocity fell asleep leaning against Grimlock’s arm.

“I have a new ship,” Rodimus says. “I’ve had it for a few years now…” He smiles. “It’s a great ship, it’s taken us everywhere.”

“Us?”

“Me and my crew. I have a new crew!” His smile widens. “You should meet them, Drift. I’ve told them all that it’s thanks to you that I’m the captain they know and love!”

Drift can’t tell whether or not that’s a joke. He doesn’t dwell on that, because Rodimus is watching him cautiously despite the smile.

“What?” he asks.

Rodimus looks around, leans towards Drift and whispers, “I promise I didn’t mean to take so long to come back.”

“What stopped you?” Drift says, imitating him.

“Do you remember what we talked about the last time we saw each other? About whether or not the experiment worked?”

Drift nods, slightly afraid of the mischievous glint in Rodimus’s optics.

“I promised myself that I wouldn’t come back until I could tell you what happened.”

“Rodimus…”

Rodimus shakes his head.

“It’s okay, Drift. I talked to them.” He takes hold of one of Drift’s hands. “They’re happy.”

Drift looks down at their joined hands. The last time they saw each other, Rodimus’s grip had been odd and clumsy, desperate, and his hand had been shaking slightly. Today, Rodimus’s hand holds Drift’s carefully, loosely, ready to let go as soon as Drift tries to pull away. That’s not happening. Not in the way Rodimus thinks.

Drift jumps down from his seat and puts his arms around Rodimus. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing - Rodimus has more edges than Drift remembered, and touching isn’t something that Drift allowed himself that often, but he manages to make himself fit around Rodimus, pulls him as close as he dares to after all the time they’ve been apart.

“And you?” Drift says, pressing his helm to Rodimus’s. “Are you happy?”

Slowly, Rodimus’s arms come up to circle Drift. He’s warm against him. Rodimus's ventilations brush Drift’s face and he thinks that, if he concentrates, he can feel Rodimus’s spark spinning, close to his own where their chests are pressed together.

“Yes, I am.” After a pause, he tentatively asks, “And you?”

“I’m happy too,” Drift says, tightening his hold on Rodimus and allowing himself to hide his face in the crook of Rodimus’s neck. “Don’t leave like that again.”

Rodimus shakes his head as best as he can, considering Drift’s position. “I won’t. Promise.”

“Good. I missed you.”

Drift feels Rodimus tensing up against him, but he won’t move away. Not yet. Rodimus can’t be out there, lost in space, if he’s here in Drift’s arms. As long as Rodimus is here, he’s safe, and so is Drift.

“You did?”

“Of course I did,” Drift says, mock chastising, leaning back to look at Rodimus. “You’re my best friend.”

Rodimus relaxes and lets himself fall forward and rest his head against Drift’s chest.

“I missed you too.” He pulls Drift closer and holds him tightly, like he has finally been given permission to do so.

It takes them a while to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you've read the driftrod zine, then you already know what happens next :3
> 
> If you want to say hi or something, you can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Vetoing_Clocks/status/1347920659167334401) or [Tumblr](https://veto-power-over-fanworks.tumblr.com/post/639796694125592576/see-the-sunrise-from-the-other-side-theres).


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